Dark Heart's Shadows
by DezoPenguin
Summary: Riho's sympathy for a night school classmate draws Shido into the web of shadows that has infected a couple's life, and into the path of a lethal night breed.
1. Default Chapter

"Time is up! Please hand in your papers," the teacher answered. Riho Yamazaki set down her pencil and joined the line of other students moving to the front of the room to hand in their answer sheets, falling in before old Mrs. Kawamura and behind Mr. Izumi, a factory worker from the city's industrial district. She hoped that she'd done well; midterms were no laughing matter and she'd nearly exhausted herself cramming. Still, it was finished now, and she could look forward to the first night in a week she hadn't spent curled around books.

The cool night air was refreshing as she left the building and strolled through the parking lot. All around her, the other students were getting into their cars and starting the drive home. Riho didn't have a car, or a license for that matter, so she considered taking the bus versus just walking. It was a nice evening, and she certainly had no fear of the streets at night, very much unlike a few months ago.

_Now I can go wherever I like. That's a good thing, isn't it?_ Sometimes it was hard to find good things about her present state, but she was fiercely determined not to have any regrets.

The shrill sound of weeping combined with the clatter of metal pulled Riho out of her reverie. The parking lot had emptied but for the teacher's car and a small blue Honda that Mrs. Ishida, one of Riho's classmates, was obviously having trouble getting into, rattling her keys against the lock in a futile effort to get one to fit. Her shaking hands made it all but impossible for her, and finally with a scream of frustration she hurled the key ring through the driver's-side window, shattering it.

"Mrs. Ishida!" Riho dashed over to the other woman. She didn't know any of her classmates well, but she could hardly ignore that. "Mrs. Ishida, are you all right? What's wrong?" The other woman was sagging forward against the car, her body wracked by sobs; Riho caught her by the waist so she didn't fall to her knees into the broken glass.

Surprised, the woman turned her tear-stained face to the girl.

"Miss Yamazaki?" she choked out.

"Uh-huh," Riho nodded. "Is there...is there anything I can do?"

"You-you wouldn't understand. You're a kind child, but you wouldn't-you can't help."

"Please? You shouldn't be alone right now. At least let me get you a cup of coffee."

Mrs. Ishida looked at her for a long moment, then gave in. There was a point of despair where anything, any human kindness was enough. Riho had been there herself, after her parents' deaths. She'd been kneeling at their grave marker, the rain pouring down on and around her, when a stranger had offered his umbrella. That one tiny thing had prompted her to fling herself into his arms.

_How different would it have been, had I not met you there, Mr. Shido?_

Since it was a clear, quiet night and Mrs. Ishida looked like the presence of too many other people would be intolerable for her, Riho bought her a cup of coffee at a convenience store and the two sat on a bench near the school's playground. The older woman drank, letting the wind play at her shoulder-length brown hair, a shade lighter than Riho's.

Riho supposed she expected some outpouring of emotion, a sudden torrent of facts and feelings as Mrs. Ishida explained everything that had caused her sudden breakdown. Instead, she asked questions.

"Miss Yamazaki-"

"Riho, please."

"Riho, then. I've always wondered about this...Why is a girl your age in our class? Shouldn't you be in a normal high school, instead of taking night school courses?"

That was a sticking point. Mrs. Ishida needed answers, maybe to feel closer to Riho, maybe for some other reason, and she needed truth. Riho was a _bad_ liar.

_On the other hand, I can't tell her that I'm a vampire, so I can't go to school in the daytime!_

But perhaps part of the truth would be enough.

"My parents were killed about a year ago," she began. "I was left on my own, since I don't have any other family."

"Oh! I'm so sorry. I should never-"

"I have a job to support myself now! Mr. Shido's been really great; he took me on as an office assistant even though I didn't have any experience, and now I'm actually able to help out on cases! But I can't go to school any more, not with my new life, so I'm taking courses now so I can qualify for the college entrance examinations. They have part-time tuition at many schools, and even Internet courses! I'm sure I'll be able to get my degree."

Not that it necessarily made any difference for her future; she was hardly going to be applying for a job, entering a career. But she felt like she had to do something, to improve herself with knowledge just as she was trying to improve her understanding and command of her new nature. She couldn't be a burden to Shido forever.

"Riho, please believe that I didn't mean to pry into painful memories. I shouldn't have been so rudely curious."

"But it's all right, really, Mrs. Ishida. You can't escape your life just by not talking about it. The bad things are still there, and so are the good. Besides," she added shyly, "while I've had sorrows, there have been things about what's happened in my life that have made me really happy, too."

"I see. You clearly like your job; what kind of work do you do?"

"Mr. Shido..." Riho couldn't very well say that he hunted the supernatural parasites called night breeds. "Oh!" She fished through her purse and found a small packet of his business cards. "Here you are."

"Tatsuhiko Shido Private Detective Agency," Mrs. Ishida read, then looked wide-eyed up at Riho. "A private detective? Maybe this is fate."

"Fate? Did you need to hire a detective for something, Mrs. Ishida?"

The older woman trembled, an emotional spasm running through her.

"It's my husband, Riho! Every day he seems to become more and more distant, more and more preoccupied with something. I've tried to help, but he just brushes me away! It's like his soul is being eaten alive right before my eyes, and there's nothing I can do alone. I have to know what's happening to him and how I can stop it, before...before...oh, God, I'm afraid this is killing him!"

The dam broke, and she dissolved once more into a frenzy of despairing sobs.

"Don't...don't worry, Mrs. Ishida," Riho stammered out. "Mr. Shido is a great detective. I'm sure he can find out what's troubling Mr. Ishida."

-X X-

Tatsuhiko Shido was leaning back in his chair, hands folded behind his head and a top hat tipped down over his eyes when he let out a sudden sneeze that made his head jerk and the hat go flying. It hit the top of his antique desk, bounced once, and sent a pile of documents flying out of an open case file. Guni immediately cracked up, the fairy's tiny, green, devil-winged body doing midair somersaults as she laughed.

"Someone must be taking your name in vain, Shido," Yayoi Matsunaga said. The beautiful, dark-haired NOS agent picked up the fallen hat. "Either that or the dust gathered on this thing has finally reached the terminal stages."

"Nah, Riho always insists on keeping his hat clean; she's worse than a wife," Guni quipped. "If there's any dust piling up around here it's on _him_, 'cause we haven't had a case in a week."

"When you live for centuries like we vampires do," Shido said, "you learn patience. Besides, no work for us means that there haven't been any recent night breed incidents, and I'm not going to complain about that."

"Yeah, but if it keeps up like this, Yayoi's going to resent being a blood bank on legs without getting anything in return."

"That's right, Shido," Yayoi teased, perching on the desk corner and leaning close. "The terms were payment for services received."

"And here I thought the act itself had its own compensations," Shido flirted back.

"Sorry; I've never been an easy mark for cheap thrills."

Shido glanced towards the office kitchen, remembering the numerous times such an exchange had been followed by the clatter of a dropped kettle or tray. When she'd been alive, Riho had had a serious crush on him-in spite of his subconscious mind's best attempts to hide from it-and had reacted towards the sexy Yayoi's flirtations like any teen who fancied herself in love would. Since then she hadn't been so demonstrative, probably due to the stress of adjusting to her new life, or rather unlife. He, in turn, knew that he had to think about what was best for her, regardless of his own feelings.

Nonetheless, it still reminded him that she was away at class. The office seemed darker, more lifeless without Riho in it.

"Still, you're right; breed activity has been down a bit of late. There have been a couple of body-snatching incidents where a breed went and possessed a corpse, but nothing we in the NOS couldn't handle."

"You mean you don't need Shido to solve all your cases for you?"

"Guni," Shido chided.

"Are you trying to pick a fight with me because Riho isn't here to tease?"

"Well, yeah, mostly. But Shido does do an awful lot for you."

"The NOS is a national organization; we solve cases all throughout Japan. Still, here in this city we have access to Sherlock Holmes, so why should I leave things up to that pack of Lestrades back at headquarters? Besides, weren't you the one complaining because you didn't have any work?"

The door burst open and Riho dashed into the room.

"Mr. Shido! I'm back!"

"It's good to see you. How did exams go?"

"They were really hard, so it's a good thing I spent all that extra time cramming. I did much better with my English literature than I thought I would; I've never been good at foreign languages."

"You'll be better now. Vampires have an instinct for communication, picking up languages, customs, and body language."

"Oh, I see. But that's not the big news. Mr. Shido, I found us a job!"

"You did?" Guni asked excitedly. "What kind of breed is it?"

"It's...not a breed."

"Oh?" Now Shido was curious.

"It's for one of my classmates, Mrs. Ishida. She's terribly worried about her husband."

Guni cracked up laughing again.

"Her husband? Oh, this is rich, Shido! The little pipsqueak went and brought you a divorce case!"

"It's not a divorce case!" Riho flared back. "Mrs. Ishida is sincerely worried about her husband! And I don't think anyone under a foot tall should be calling anyone a pipsqueak!"

Shido smiled to himself as he watched their byplay. Riho was really the must un-vampirelike night walker he'd ever imagined. Now, he himself was a different story. He _looked_ like the popular conception of a vampire, with his elegantly handsome face, long nearly-white hair, and even his slightly archaic mode of dress-three-piece suit and string tie. Riho, though-who ever heard of a vampire who looked like a wide-eyed schoolgirl? Who wore her hair in a waist-length foxtail tied back by an oversized blue bow? Even her complexion wasn't as pale as it had been in the first few days, now that she was feeding regularly.

"Please, Mr. Shido? She doesn't know where else to turn." When he didn't respond, Riho quickly told him the entire story of her encounter with Mrs. Ishida after class. He had to admit that it did sound like the woman needed help, and that it didn't appear to be an ordinary marital squabble. Still...

"Riho, this really isn't the type of case that I work on. I run this agency to help protect humans from the night breeds, not to settle their own problems. There are plenty of other detectives in this city, human detectives who are better suited for this kind of work."

"But, Mr. Shido, she doesn't know any other detectives. And think of how hard it was for her to talk about her family problems to me. How can she open up to a complete stranger?" She glanced aside, not meeting his eyes. "And, I said I was sure you could help her," she added in a very small voice.

"Riho, you shouldn't be making promises in Shido's name," Yayoi said. Shido was surprised by his first instinct, which was to leap to Riho's defense, despite the fact that Yayoi was completely correct.

"Still, it's not like we have any other work," Guni pointed out. "At least this is a paying job-she did say she'd pay, right?"

"Mrs. Ishida insisted on it. She even gave me a twenty thousand yen retainer."

"All right! We can't turn her down now!"

"And you were just saying how bored you were about not having any jobs," Yayoi chipped in.

"I don't recall saying anything of the kind."

"It was between the lines, Shido. We women can pick up on these things."

_Sounds to me like an excuse for ignoring what a person says,_ Shido thought. Still, the odds were clearly arrayed against him. Now could he ignore Yayoi's encouragement, Guni's avarice, and Riho's heartfelt pleading all at once.

"All right, Riho; we'll take the case. There's a condition, though: if a night breed incident comes up while we're working on this, that has to take first priority."

"Thank you, Mr. Shido!" She opened her purse. "Here's a snapshot Mrs. Ishida gave me of her husband. She's in it, too, so you can recognize them both. I wrote down their home address, and she also gave me his business card. He's an architect. And here's the retainer she paid." One by one she set each item on the desk.

Shido picked up the photograph, which looked to have been taken at an amusement park boardwalk. Ishida was an ordinary-looking fellow with close-cut dark hair, but both he and his wife were laughing in the shot, which lent them animation.

Maybe Riho was right. There were other reasons why human lives were pulled into the darkness besides the breeds. Keeping these two people's hearts within the light for whatever reason was worth doing.


	2. Chapter 2

Usually, the sight of Keiji Ishida seated in his favorite chair, watching television, would bring a smile to his wife's face. They'd had that chair for over twenty years; it didn't match the decor and the upholstery was becoming worn and tatty. Yet, he insisted on keeping it. A new chair, or even just reupholstering that one, wouldn't be the same. It was one of the cute quirks that she loved about him.

There was nothing cute about it now, though. He sat fixed in a darkened room, staring at the television screen, his face alternately glowing garish blues and yellows and greens as the images changed.

"Keiji, darling," she began hesitantly, "I saw that the kitchen hadn't been used. Would you like me to fix you something for dinner?"

"No, thank you."

His voice was a dull, flat monotone, as if it came from somewhere far away.

"Darling, you really should eat something. You've been looking run-down lately, and..."

"I'll get something later."

"How...how was work today? You came home awfully late. I waited up for you, but I had to go off to my class. You must have been very busy. Is there some new and exciting project you're working on?"

"Not really."

Mrs. Ishida looked at him helplessly. It was just as she'd told the Yamazaki girl, something seemed to be draining the life, the very soul out of her Keiji. It was excruciating to watch as day by day he became more withdrawn, until he was barely there, almost unaware of what was happening around him.

She hoped this Mr. Shido could help, could find out the source of what was wrong, but in her heart of hearts she doubted he could do anything. The Ishidas seemed to be under a curse. First there had been that terrible car accident, and then once she'd recovered from that, now Keiji had fallen under this nameless shadow. A Christian friend of hers had once told her the story of the Book of Job, and she remembered it now, for it seemed indeed as if their lives had been given over to the devil's hand.

-X X-

The sky was just beginning to glow with the orange and scarlet fire of sunset when Shido and Riho walked up to Yayoi's blazing red sportster. The lovely NOS agent glanced up at their approach.

"Keiji Ishida is still inside," she told them. "I hope you appreciate that I'm doing this on my personal time, being the only one of this little group who doesn't have issues with daylight."

"I owe you a favor," Shido agreed.

"Darned right you do, and I'm going to collect."

"Did he seem at all unusual? Was he upset?"

"A little preoccupied, maybe. The firm is working on a big contract for a skyscraper downtown, and the pressure's on."

Guni poked her upper body out of her nest in Shido's hair.

"So that's all it is? A little job stress?"

"I don't think Mrs. Ishida would have been in such a state if that was all that was bothering him," Riho said.

"I think you're right," Shido said. "When you live with a person for a long time, you can tell the usual problems from something out of the ordinary."

"His coworkers don't think anything's too wrong," Yayoi contributed. "He seemed a little bit tired and stressed out, but..."

"So, he's only showing that side of himself to his wife, which implies that the problem lies at home. At work, while it still nags at his mind, he's away from the immediate source of trouble and he's then able to relax somewhat." Shido rubbed his chin. "I'm starting to become curious."

"Ms. Yayoi, how did you find out all this information?"

"I have a badge, which definitely helps when you talk to people."

"But, you didn't have to do that. You just promised to keep watch on him during the day."

She ran her hand through her hair, giving it a flip.

"I don't like doing a job halfway. Besides, the more I do to solve this case, the bigger favor you and Shido are going to owe me. Good luck!"

Yayoi turned the key and her car's engine ignited with a sensual purr well-matched to the driver. She pulled out, merged into traffic, and left the two vampires standing on the curb.

"It was really nice of Ms. Yayoi to help us," Riho commented.

"She's a good friend. Besides, though she won't admit it, I think she was touched by your story. Come on; we need to get a closer look. If he's having an affair or doing something else after hours that's causing this stress he's under, we won't find out by waiting here."

"I thought you didn't think he was having work problems?"

"I don't, but it doesn't pay to be careless, either." He paused, then changed his instructions as he considered the problem of getting into the tall glass-and-steel tower to observe. "Actually, I think you should wait here. If you see Mr. Ishida leave, go ahead and follow him."

"Why do you want me to wait, Mr. Shido?"

"You're learning the physical powers of being a vampire, but you're still too new to unlife to learn the optical tricks, how to project your shadow or stay unseen. I'll need those to get in without causing a ruckus."

He turned, took a couple of steps forward, and slipped into the shadows. Cain, the vampire who'd changed him, had always been better at this than he was, but Shido felt confident in his ability to fool ordinary human senses. Riho was left waiting for over three hours until Ishida finally exited the building.

Remembering Shido's instructions, she started after their quarry. He'd nearly reached the subway station when Shido reappeared beside her.

"Oh, Mr. Shido! I'm glad you're back. Did he do anything suspicious?"

"No; he was just working. Actually, he spent most of the time staring at his drafting board. The later it got, the less he did, until he finally gave up and went home."

"Hmm."

They followed him onto the train and waited during the hour-long commute. Ishida did nothing significant; indeed, during the entire time he did nothing at all, merely sat in his seat without so much as reading a newspaper. When they reached the station nearest his address, he rose and shuffled off, slowly walking the two blocks to the Ishida home with slow, plodding steps.

The house was nearly dark when he reached it, only a single window showing a light behind it. Shido thought this was strange; nine-thirty was hardly that late.

"Riho, your class doesn't meet again tonight, does it?"

"No, Mr. Shido, not until Monday. What's wrong?"

"Mrs. Ishida is worried enough about her husband to hire us, but she's not waiting up for him?"

"Maybe she's out running errands?"

A few minutes after Ishida had gone inside, he came out again, but there was a distinct difference in his manner. Instead of his slow, shuffling movements, he strode with determination and purpose. In those short minutes, something had changed. He walked out of the residential area to a nearby business section where the red and blue lights of convenience stores, restaurants, and taverns dominated, creating an even greater contrast between the patches of light and darkness than in the quiet residential street. There were still crowds of people about, from teens to late-night shoppers to those out for a night of socializing. That proved to be a serious problem, because in hanging back far enough not to be noticed as following Ishida, Shido lost him when he merged with the crowd.

"Do you see where he went, Riho?"

"No, I lost sight when those six people came out of that bar up there and he went behind them. I'm sorry."

"Don't be; I lost him too."

Guni poked her head out.

"Well, you'd better find him, if you don't want Yayoi to be laughing at you all next week"

"You're right about that, so why don't you check things out from the air? Riho, you take that side of the street, and I'll go this way."

"Okay," the two women chorused.

It should have been easy. Vampires were the quintessential hunters, the stalkers of human prey. But, without some kind of link connecting them, a distinctive literal or supernatural "scent" to track, Shido was no better off than an ordinary human would have been.

_Ha! Maybe not; an ordinary human couldn't have made out his face moving through the shadows up ahead._ Shido started off at once as Ishida turned down a side alley between a restaurant and a 24-7. Hopefully the others would see, too, or at least see _him_, but he didn't have time to signal them. Moving through the crowd would take too long unless he did something absurdly obvious and spectacular. Still, he deftly navigated the living obstacle course as best one could and turned into the alley, into a different world.

In the street there had been light, noise, population, the press of the crowd. Here things were cool and deserted. The walls were plain brick and mortar, with no reason for decoration. A stray cat hissed at Shido from atop a garbage can, then ducked behind it, out of sight. Ishida was nowhere to be seen, so Shido moved on quickly to an intersection in the middle of the block. He glanced left and right; there was nothing in sight, no one.

Then he smelled it.

Blood.

_Fresh blood._

To the right he went, then another left into a cross-alley that led out to the far side of the block from where he'd entered. A body lay there, sprawled face-down, blood staining its clothing and the ground around it. It seemed particularly dark and close there in the presence of death, the shadows looming close.

Shadows that were black and inky even to Shido's eyes.

At once he raised his hand to his mouth and pierced his finger with his fangs. Blood welled up from the wound and with a snap of his wrist he sprayed the crimson droplets outwards. The magic of a vampire was in and of the blood; even shed Shido still controlled it and could wield it as a weapon against supernatural or mortal creatures alike. The hurled drops swelled into glittering bullets of crimson light that arced towards the darkest patch of shadow. Before they struck, the shadow flowed outwards in all directions, creating a circular patch in the center of where it was. The bloodmissiles impacted harmlessly against the wall, raising little bursts of dust.

Pairs of eyes opened in the shadows, regarding Shido with a cold, corrupt anger. They shone with the putrid azure color of marsh gas, a devilish will-o-wisp.

Again Shido raked his finger with his fangs, this time willing the blood into the shape of a sword. His hand closed around the weapon's hilt, ready to parry and counterstrike.

"Come on, breed," he challenged the creature. "I haven't got all night."

The breed, however, seemed disinclined to fight. Its myriad eyes closed, and the shadows flowed away in several different directions at once. Before Shido could consider giving chase-or indeed, how to-it was gone. He released the bloodsword and bent over the body. It was a young man, college-age, in jeans, sweatshirt, and a baseball cap. It was not Keiji Ishida. Indeed, there was no sign of Ishida anywhere.

Soft, quick-moving steps caught Shido's attention, and he turned to see Riho and Guni coming up the alley.

"Mr. Shido! That isn't-"

"No, it's not Ishida. But he was just here in these alleys not long ago, and this is a breed kill. We'd better call Yayoi. She won't need to be using her personal time to help on this any more."

-X X-

"Darling, I'm home!" Mrs. Ishida called as she came through the door. She stepped out of her shoes and into house slippers, then turned towards the kitchen and set down her brightly colored plastic bags of groceries. "I got your favorite fish for tomorrow's supper."

"Thank you."

Ishida's voice was dull and lifeless. The pale light of the television screen reflected off his glasses, but did not quite reach the shadowy corners of the living room.

From those corners, the devil seemed to be laughing.


	3. Chapter 3

"It was definitely a breed kill, according to the autopsy report," Yayoi announced.

"After what I saw, did you have any doubts?" Shido asked.

"No, but it never hurts to rule out coincidence. The breed _could_ have been attracted by the violence of an ordinary murder, after all. That's been completely ruled out, now. What's more, this turns out to have been the fifth such incident in the past two months."

"The fifth? Shouldn't that have turned up in your research?"

"Yeah," Guni put in, "I thought you said there haven't been many breed incidents lately."

The afternoon sun shining through the blinds made a dappled pattern of light and shadow on Yayoi's face. Her eyes flashed with anger, an emotion she felt as passionately as any other, but it wasn't directed at the wisecracking fairy this time.

"That's right. So far as the NOS knew, there had been no breed-related crimes in that part of the city. It turns out that the local police have been playing games again."

"I thought they'd have learned their lesson after the Ryuichi Taki incident?" Shido asked, referring to a past case where a night breed had possessed a detective's corpse.

"They resent our jurisdiction over these matters. Having a federal agency come in and take over a case in their territory is an insult to their professional honor, as they see it. They failed to report the crimes as possibly breed-related to NOS, officially concealing aspects of the autopsies so they could solve the matter themselves."

"That's awful!" Riho exclaimed.

"Sounds like any TV police show," Guni said. "Either the locals are interfering and jealous hicks who won't let the expert feds do their jobs, or the feds are arrogant glory-hounds who want to steal the case and the press time from the hardworking locals, depending on which side the hero works for."

"But...people's lives are at stake!" Riho protested. "By not calling in the NOS, the police let the night breed run loose to kill again and again!"

"The type of people who play those games don't care about that, Riho. All that matters to them is power and glory. These bureaucratic turf wars are all about ego."

"Well, they're going to _wish_ they cared, Shido," Yayoi snapped. "We lodged a formal protest at noon and by two o'clock three senior officers had turned in their resignations. We'll have another two out by sunset, and criminal misconduct charges may well be filed against the captain who was responsible for the decision. It'll help if we can finish this fast and thereby prove that NOS expertise was worth calling in."

"I see. If we can locate and take out the breed in a day or two while they've had two months of useless floundering about, it will tie the blame for the later deaths to their stubborn provincialism."

"And prevent it from happening next time. The NOS, and even you, can't do anything about the breeds if we don't know they're out there."

"True enough."

Yayoi's angry expression vanished, to be replaced by a smile.

"The good news is, because you found out about this, my boss is definitely looking at me as the service's fair-haired child. So, about that favor you owed me for helping you out, you can consider us even. Now, how are we going to catch that breed?"

"Um...excuse me?"

"Yes, Riho?"

"Mr. Shido, I know it's important to track down the breed, but what about Mr. Ishida? We can't just drop that case; Mrs. Ishida really needs our help."

"We're not going to drop it. In fact, I think it's fairly obvious the two cases are connected."

"Mr. Shido..."

"Consider the facts. Ishida's been acting strangely for some time now. Last night he went home after work, and as soon as he found out that his wife wasn't home, he left again. He vanished into the crowd, then slipped down an alley where only minutes later I found a night breed 'standing' over its latest victim."

"We never did locate him," said Guni. "We were all too concerned with the breed and the crime."

"This isn't coincidence," Shido said. "The only coincidental part is you, Riho, attending the same class as Mrs. Ishida, which brought us into this case from that side, instead of being called in by Yayoi as we usually are. Ishida wasn't the victim."

"So you think he's the night breed? That can't be! Poor Mrs. Ishida."

"It's worse than that," Yayoi suggested. "When a breed possesses a corpse, it can't act like a human being or fit easily into our world. Ishida is holding down a job and all but passing for normal among his co-workers."

They all understood what she was driving at, but it was Shido who put it into words.

"He's still alive, then. And a night breed only takes possession of a living, awake body while letting the human mind still function if the human lets it in. He's made a deal with the darkness, and it's used him to kill."

"No! Are you going to leave Mrs. Ishida with nothing?"

"If her husband has sold his soul to a breed, then there's no help for it."

"But we can't even be sure of that! You didn't see him become the breed, did you?"

"No, I didn't."

"Well, then? You can't be _sure_ he's the one!"

Riho's stricken face made Shido's heart want to melt, but facts had to be faced. Her sympathy for the Ishidas couldn't excuse what the breed had done.

Sometimes, life just didn't offer a way out without tragedy. Like an epic play, fate inevitably trapped those who would fight against it.

"Riho's right about one thing," Yayoi said. "We can't act without proof. The only solution is to go right on doing what we were doing already: maintain surveillance on Ishida and catch him in the act. Then"-she fixed her gaze on the vampire girl's-"we do what we have to do."

-X X-

"Darling, I need to go out for a bit," Mrs. Ishida said. "We're out of wheat flour again, and I promised Mrs. Terada that I'd make homemade noodles for the society dinner again this year."

She expected the announcement to receive the same curt, monotone response everything she'd said over the past couple of weeks had drawn. Instead, her husband almost leapt from his chair.

"Don't go, Reiko!" he exclaimed. His eyes were wide with fear, and she could see the dark shadows beneath them, the sunken cheeks that testified to the lack of care he was taking with himself.

"Keiji?"

He seized her hands between his, his whole body trembling in the grip of emotion.

"Please," he begged, "please don't leave me tonight. Don't leave me alone, Reiko."

There were tears in his eyes.

"But darling, we-"

"Please don't leave me alone," he whimpered, sagging to his knees before her.

"All right, darling," she said, slipping her arms around his shoulders. "I won't leave you by yourself."

His arms closed around her waist and he sobbed pitifully, "Thank you," over and over again. Her heart nearly broke at seeing what had become of him.

-X X-

The tunnel lights strobed by monotonously as Yayoi drove Shido out towards the Ishidas' neighborhood.

"For the past three days, Ishida has left his house in the morning to go to work, returned directly from work in the evening, and stayed in all night with his wife," he mused. "During that time, there have been no more breed attacks in the area."

"It's not proof," Yayoi said, "but at least so long as that parallel continues, it'll justify continued surveillance to HQ. One good thing about the central unit is that they don't mind spending money so long as it produces results."

"That's unusual in a government agency."

"I'll say."

"So what did you find out about the Ishidas' background?"

"The file's in the side pocket beside you."

Shido opened it and began to look things over.

"Thorough," he remarked.

"Administratively speaking, the NOS is classified as a counterintelligence agency rather than a police one, so we can get hold of records a bit more efficiently than ordinary investigators. The interesting part starts right before the murders began."

"I see."

It was another link in the chain, a correspondence in time between a striking event happening to the Ishidas and the start of the breed incidents. Again, not proof, but very suggestive.

"The Ishidas were in a serious automobile accident two and a half months ago. Mrs. Ishida suffered serious injuries and was in critical condition, but her recovery went smoothly and without apparent complications."

"But Mr. Ishida was a different story."

"Despite the car being totaled and the injuries to his wife, Mr. Ishida escaped the crash entirely unhurt. The condition was suspicious enough that the police initially suspected that he might have deliberately arranged the crash as a murder attempt."

"Really?" Shido mused.

"That idea came to nothing, though. On the one hand his worry and concern for his wife's health was obviously genuine, as was his happiness at her recovery. The accident-reconstruction team and the mechanical inspection of the vehicle provided the hard data."

"So the accident _was_ an accident, then," Shido concluded. That led naturally to one chain of thought, but he didn't want to bring it up to Yayoi. It cut too close to her past, to old wounds.

Somewhat to Shido's surprise, she brought it up herself.

"We've seen it happen before, though, a night breed preserving the life and health of a human in a desperate situation-in exchange, of course, for the chance to inhabit that body." She made no reference to how she'd encountered that pattern, but that wasn't relevant, anyway. "You can see it, can't you? The car goes out of control, he prays for safety, and something decides to answer him, for a price."

"And since he'd already received the requested benefit, only the strongest will could keep the breed out," Shido agreed. "It holds together, Yayoi."

"It's only a guess-but the first killing happened only two days after Mr. and Mrs. Ishida returned home from the hospital."

"Both of them?"

"Even though he wasn't hurt himself, Ishida stayed with his wife night and day, even taking a room in an adjoining hotel. That's part of what I meant about his concern obviously being genuine."

"I see," Shido mused, reading over the relevant part of the dossier. He found it odd that the killings had not started right away. Possibly Ishida's worry over his wife's health had given him the willpower needed to resist the breed's urges. Or perhaps the killings _had_ begun, and gone unnoticed because the deaths had occurred in a hospital. That would be something else for the NOS to look into. With their government badges and their manpower, assembling information was something they were much better at than Shido. It was in closing the case by dealing with the night breed that they fell sharply behind.

The shrill ring of the car phone interrupted his thoughts.

"Matsunaga here," Yayoi answered. "Yes...uh huh...All right; I'm on my way." She hung up, slapping the phone down sharply even as she slammed her foot on the gas.

"Ishida is on the move?"

"Just like three days ago; his wife wasn't home when he returned from work and so he immediately went back out."

"He's earlier tonight, though."

"Which is why we're late. Hold on tight, Shido!"


	4. Chapter 4

Yayoi's driving could at times resemble the woman herself: determined and passionate. With the kind of brazen defiance of traffic codes found only in auto thieves and law officers in hot pursuit, she was able to rendezvous with the other NOS operatives in time for Shido and she herself to take over surveillance of Keiji Ishida before he reached the shopping district near his home.

Shido was determined that this time he would not lose sight of Ishida for a moment. When the breed appeared he would be ready to strike, to keep it from taking any more lives. That determination was not his only advantage. Yayoi may not have had any supernatural powers, but she was a trained and experienced law officer; she knew _how_ to follow a suspect. Shido and Yayoi separated and were able to work together as a team, taking different angles and vantage points and helping each other along in a way Riho couldn't do.

This time, when Ishida turned down an alley, he didn't have a chance to disappear; his pursuers had him in sight the entire time. That was why the scream took them completely by surprise.

"What was that?" Guni exclaimed, popping out from Shido's hair.

Keiji Ishida was not caught flatfooted, though. He immediately burst out running towards the scream, with Shido, Yayoi, and Guni behind him a moment later.

The scene was almost the same as before: the shadowed alley, the blood, corpse in the center, the blue balefires of the killer's eyes glaring down from the walls. Shido sprang forward at once, his vampiric speed carrying him past Ishida while he raked his finger with his fang. This time the blood droplets coalesced into a long, crimson whip which he lashed out towards the shadow. Again the breed dodged Shido's attack, flowing aside before the blow struck, and the bloodwhip tore a deep gouge in the wall instead of its quarry.

"Damn it! Stand and fight!" Shido cursed, and took off into pursuit. The breed's shadowy form was hard to make out, but Shido was able to spot it even in the dimly lit alley by finding the patches of darkness that his night vision could not penetrate. Yayoi had even a harder time of it, but she too found a way, by following where shadows lingered like a dark, inky stain on the walls and pavement even when her gun's underbarrel light was trained directly on them. They raced down and through the warren of alleys and out again on the far side of the commercial block where the living shadow flowed down the walls and merged together as it reached the feet of a woman.

At the noise made by her pursuers she turned, and it surprised no one that her face matched that in Reiko Ishida's photograph. Her shadow seemed entirely normal, exactly following the pattern cast by the lights around her-except that Shido could still not see through it.

"W-what's going on?" she stammered. She might not have known what to make of Shido, with his undead eyes glowing gold, or of Guni, but Yayoi in her trim white skirt-suit and government-issue firearm presented a very clear threat. Her eyes fastened on her husband. "Keiji, who are these people?" She took a half-step towards him.

"Don't move, Mrs. Ishida," Yayoi snapped, pointing the gun directly at her. "Shido, is there any chance of getting the breed out of her?"

He didn't know; he wasn't sure how deeply the possession had taken root. One thing, though, he did know.

"She's killed six people to feed the breed's hunger," he said grimly.

"No! Don't hurt her!" Keiji Ishida shouted, and rushed between his wife and her pursuers, facing them with spread arms in the classic protective pose. "This is all my fault!"

"Keiji?"

"_Your_ fault?" Yayoi challenged.

"I was the one driving the car! I was the one who got careless and drifted off the road, then got into a skid when I tried to pull back on. _My_ stupidity, _my_ lack of skill-and yet I walked away without a scratch! Reiko was critically injured! The doctors thought she might die...or that if she pulled through, she might lose the use of her legs. Can you understand what I felt? They said she only had a ten percent chance of making a full recovery! I'd killed or crippled Reiko through my own clumsiness!"

"So?" said Shido.

"I'd have done anything to help, given everything I had to pay for a specialist, whatever it took, but there was nothing more than could be done, medically. So I...I turned to other means."

"The breed."

"It was black magic, I know. I followed the instructions in an old manuscript I found at a secondhand bookshop, and I called up the devil. I promised it my body and soul if it would save Reiko's life and health."

"You're not the night breed, Ishida. _She_ is."

"It didn't want me!" he cried. "It wanted Reiko's body! Only if it entered into her could it save her life! But I couldn't make that bargain. I'd have let it take me, and gladly, if it was for her sake, but I couldn't give it Reiko's body. So it..."

"It took her shadow instead," Shido concluded. In the physical world, a shadow was nothing but the place where an opaque body blocked a light source, but supernaturally it was much more.

"Then...then that's why..." Mrs. Ishida stammered, trying to process her husband's sudden confession.

"The devil kept its end of the bargain," he continued. "The surgery was an apparent success, and Reiko healed quickly. The doctors never realized anything was wrong; it just seemed like we had beaten the odds. Reiko had no idea what had happened; she was just herself, happy to be alive so we could get on with our lives. She never knew...but I did. I could feel it, lurking there, watching us, always with us even in our own home. I was going out of my mind."

"Not to mention how she was killing people to satisfy the night breed," Yayoi contributed dryly.

"She didn't know anything about that!" Ishida shouted in protest.

"That's probably true," Shido agreed. "The breed animates her shadow and separates from her in search of prey. She isn't there when it kills; she doesn't see the crimes, but she's being used to commit them all the same."

It was a devilish predicament Mrs. Ishida was in. Most of the time, a human mind not yet lost to darkness could fight down, suppress a night breed so that it could be forcibly removed. This, though...what ordinary human could control their shadow? The breed didn't have to overcome or seduce Mrs. Ishida's will to act.

On the other hand, perhaps it would be possible to destroy the breed without harming Mrs. Ishida.

"Please," Ishida begged. "I'm the one to blame. If someone has to suffer for it, make it be me!"

"You deserve it, for what you've condemned your wife to," Shido said, "but there's no point to it. Now the only thing to do is to kill the breed, one way or another."

With a flick of his wrist he sent the bloodwhip snaking out to coil around Ishida and pull the human out of the way. The night breed, though, had been watching and waiting, and seeing its enemy's weapon momentarily out of play, it struck. Inky spears of liquid darkness plunged upwards, spearing through Ishida's body and lunging at Shido, each sprouting into an egg-shaped head, featureless but for four azure eyes and a lipless, circular mouth like a leech's.

The faced arced towards him, but even caught off-guard as he was the vampire's reflexes were superb; he sprang out of the way, letting the useless whip fall and calling up the bloodsword in its place. He slashed out as the shadow heads neared him, shearing down between one's eyes, but the darkness actually swirled apart, opening a channel for the sword to pass harmlessly through, then reforming once the sword had swept by.

Then the heads struck, one scoring on Shido's ankle and another one on the lower right of his abdomen. Razored teeth in the leech-mouths shredded clothing and drew blood with their feverish attack. Shido slashed at one of the necks and again the darkness gave way before him, but this time the head faded away once it was separated from the main body of the shadow. Yayoi fired, and her gun's silver bullet caused the breed to abandon the other head in the same way.

She didn't see the wave of the shadow that had flowed out underneath her on the alley floor until it was too late, when it had exploded upwards. Yayoi's weapon was struck from her hand to go skittering away and her lower body was engulfed by the night breed like a clinging second skin. From this dark sheathing rose more of the lethal heads, turning inwards as she futilely struggled to free herself.

"Yayoi!" Shido shouted in alarm, then suddenly had more to worry about than just her as he was speared from behind, the breed having slithered up one of the side walls and attacked him as it had Ishida. For the vampire, the wounds weren't fatal, but he was badly hurt and starting to weaken from blood loss.

_What can I do?_ he thought. _How can I fight a shadow?_ This breed combined intangibility and solidity in a single deadly package. Shido had used the trick of projecting his own shadow in combat before, to trick an enemy into expending its power on a worthless target and lure a foe out of position. No matter how much force was spent attacking the shadow, it could never hurt Shido.

Just like Shido wasn't hurting the breed.

He struggled to carve his way free of the creature, but it was beginning to engulf him as it had Yayoi, wrestling for control of his limbs. From somewhere above, Guni gave a strangled yelp as the breed proved it had not forgotten her.

They were going to lose this one.

"No! I won't let this happen any more! I know Keiji wanted me to live, but I can't, not at this price."

Mrs. Ishida was holding Yayoi's gun. Steadily, with purpose, she raised it to her head.

"Not without Keiji."

In the instant of the shot, it all vanished, the leering heads, the tendrils of shadow, the black sheathing gripping arms and legs, the patch of darkness spreading across the walls. Shido and Yayoi stumbled as they were suddenly released. From the corpse's now very normal shadow, a form bubbled up, vaguely manlike with four shining blue eyes and clawed arms that dangled all the way to its feet.

Ignoring the pain of his wounds, Shido leapt at the breed and slashed out. The bloodsword bit deeply into the monster's now very physical neck and tore clean through, unnatural flesh ripping as the vampire's blood seared and blasted its body. The breed's corpse corrupted even as it fell, dissolving into dust before it even struck pavement.

Spent, Shido dropped to one knee, and Yayoi was there at once to support him.

"It's the only way to defeat a shadow," he said regretfully, "to destroy what casts it."

Yayoi loosened her collar, baring her throat.

"You're hurt badly, Shido; you'd better take blood to help yourself heal."

She was right, of course, but for the moment he could not take his eyes off the Ishidas. Riho was going to be heartbroken by this outcome, the story of a man who'd let a deep and abiding love be poisoned by selfishness and guilt.

It was the kind of end that made a man feel like he was completely alone in the world.

As Yayoi gently turned his head and brought his mouth down to her throat and Guni fluttered down, concerned, Shido was very glad that it wasn't so.


End file.
